Budget cuts could hurt regional health

Daniel BurdonDaniel Burdon is APN Australian Regional Media's Canberra bureau reporter, covering federal parliament and politics. He was previously a rural and general news reporter at the Morning Bulletin in Rockhampton and worked in Alice Springs for the Centralian Advocate.

RURAL and regional pathology and radiology services could face downgrades or closures if the Turnbull government gets Senate approval for $650 million of subsidy cuts from July.

Announced in Treasurer Scott Morrison's mid-year budget update on Tuesday, the cuts to pathology and diagnostic imaging subsidies would help fund a $627 million program to list new drugs on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

Health Minister Sussan Ley defended the cuts on Wednesday, saying they were to subsidies for large pathology companies, not rebates for people.

"The decisions they (the companies) make about what they fund and what they price are matters for them," she said.

Australian Medical Association president Associate Professor Brian Owler dubbed the exercise a "GP co-payment in disguise".

The AMA, the Rural Doctors Association of Australia and Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists all said they had not been consulted about the change.

RDAA president Ewen McPhee said the move was part of a wider and "concerning trend of successive governments" to make health policy through budget decisions rather than solid evidence, and he was concerned large pathology and radiology companies would see their margins contract because of the cuts.